Abstract

Global competition has forces companies to continuously innovate by frequently asses and improve their supply chain processes, flexibility and fast delivery as effectiveness required in each supply chain processes. This is to ensure cost efficiency, faster delivery and in the end would lead to customer satisfaction and perform better than competitors. To be able to perform better among competitors and improving firms supply chain performance, firms need the talents who able to manage global resources effectively and understand culture, suppliers/ workers attitude and comply with global regulations. Success implementation of global supply chain has linked with talents capability to maximize manage global resources. The aim of this chapter is to discuss the competency needed of global supply chain managers to support international business expansion.

Introduction

Globalization makes market becomes more competitive since nowadays the problem of geographical boundaries which hinders marketing of products and services can be overcome more easily. With the help of technological advancements, such as the internet and logistics, products and services can be marketed and consumed in any part of the world rather easily. Customers can freely choose the products and services based on their preferences on price, quality, or mode of acquisition (Morgan, 2003).

To win the competition in the global market, it is not enough for a company to operate on local level alone. Kiessling (2013) and Flint (2004) explain that with the global market, the products and services provided by MNCs can reach closer to customer value from all parts of the world. Compared to selling the product locally, global market shares are indeed much bigger. It has to operate globally, sell their products and services internationally. As an example, three brands which are produced by local companies but are already known as an international product, Nestle Coffee, Levi’s jeans, and Carrefour, have to compete with superstores such as Wal-Mart (Hammond and Grosse, 2003). Local companies have to think globally and slowly transform themselves to become Multinational Corporates (MNCs) (Hammond and Grosse, 2003; De Chiara and Spane, 2011). Multinational companies operate in multiple countries, and they move products, services, cultural styles, and economic power from one country to the others (Hammond and Grosse, 2003). For example, a German multinational engineering and electronics company, Robert Bosch GmbH, has established more than 350 subsidiaries across over 60 countries. Unilever, a London-based multinational consumer goods company, has created subsidiaries in at least 90 countries (Nguyen et al., 2015).

One of many ways for MNCs to be competitive is that the firm has to produce products and services which meet customers’ preferences, which are: having high quality with affordable price (Griffith, 2006). MNCs which operate in multiple countries can get 4 location advantages by utilizing different characteristic from each geography, which are: resources, efficiency, market, and strategic asset (Dunning, 1998; De Chiara and Spane, 2011). MNCs have to think and find another alternative of raw materials with affordable cost from other countries. They also have to consider ways to shorten their time cycle to deliver products to customers and to minimize logistics cost. In addition, as an effort in terms of resources and efficiency, they have to find operating locations which have lower labor and resource cost (De Chiara and Spane, 2011; Christopher et al., 2006).

Key Terms in this Chapter

Global Supply Chain Management: Network of facilities, activities, and social relationships that performs a multitudes of integrated value-adding function in a global context.

Global Manager: A “leader” which is a group member whose influence on group attitudes, performance, or decision making greatly exceeds that of the average member of the group.

Supply Chain Management: The integration of all the activities and processes associated with the flow of goods and information from the raw materials stage to the end consumer of the product/service.

Globalization: A network of contemporaneous events, options, and constraints, which requires the development of a systematic concept of supply chain strategy development and implementation.

Multinational Company: A mix of competitive and comparative advantage, global advantage as the basis rather than geographical locations of the organization’s activities and the integration of activities across locations.